


A Break in Routine

by southofzero



Category: Alien: Isolation (Video Game)
Genre: Christopher Samuels Lives, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, i love that 'chris lives' is actually a tag, this tiny fandom is very good and i thank every one of you for the inspiration.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 21:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14962316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/southofzero/pseuds/southofzero
Summary: They had a routine for nights like this: she'd wake up terrified, and they'd make comforting small-talk until she was ready to fall asleep again. This was breaking that routine, and yet she's still tempted to toe the line further.





	A Break in Routine

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to a friend of mine for giving me the kick I needed to write something for these two. You know who you are. 
> 
> I'd also like to give a quick nod to all the writers in this fandom. If you think something here is a reference to you, you might just be right. Thanks for keeping this ship afloat long enough for me to find it.

There's too much smoke, and she needs to get up. Sevastapol is a burning wreck, and she needs to move before she becomes a part of it. She needs to _get up_. The creature would have heard the explosion, and it could be anywhere --

A hiss hearkens its arrival, and Amanda freezes. It slips down from the vent, massive form unfolding into a shape she's come to fear.

Impossible contortions, unnatural anatomy, intelligent but cruel... she had always heard the phrase 'sin against nature', but it had always fallen flat before now. 

Its massive head swivels around to gaze sightlessly in her direction, and Amanda feels fear flood her chest. It had never looked at her before. It was effectively blind; she just had to stay still and hold her breath. Even the perfect organism could be fooled.

But not this time.

The creature lets out a harsh rattle and begins to stalk towards her, and Amanda's breath hitches in her throat.

She's going to die here, she realizes. She's going to die here, terrified and alone, and no-one would ever care.

The alien's whip-like tail wraps around her calf, and a scream starts in her throat as she's dragged towards her death.

The sudden sensation of being awake startles her.

Ripley's balance fails as she sits up, and she feels herself slipping the rest of the way out of bed. Her fingers nearly rip the sheets as she claws for purchase, but she's fully conscious by the time she hits the floor.

Her shoulder smacks the nightstand on the way down, sending her thrice-repaired alarm clock crashing down with her.

Ripley lays there for a moment, shared between hysteria and burning shame. A grown woman, yet here she was, on the floor after a nightmare.

She pushes herself up and glances down at her legs. At some point, her sheets had gotten wrapped around her knees. Probably the catalyst for the nightmare. Her face feels icy -- she'd begun crying at some point. Ridiculous.

She pulls up her shirt to scrub angrily at her face, replacing the chill with the sting of fabric burn.

Her breath stutters again, more tears following. Ripley grits her teeth. Same shit, different night.

There's a knock, and she whips around to look at her door.

Ah, fuck. Samuels. She probably interrupted his rest cycle with all her crashing and banging. Ripley tries to get up, but abandons the effort when her shoulder sings with pain. In a last-ditch effort to make herself presentable, she wipes the tears from her face and drops her hands into her lap.

"You can come in."

He doesn't bother turning on the light as he enters; he can see just fine without it. She feels stupid, sitting in the floor tangled in her sheets, and she knows she probably looks just as foolish as she feels.

She always forgets how tall Samuels is until he's towering above her, but he drops to a kneel and suddenly they're eye-to-eye. His brows are furrowed, brown irises dark in the dim light.

"Amanda, are you alright?" His voice is low, the cadences echoing sympathy, and Amanda hesitates. Her pride kept her from accepting pity, but this felt like the farthest thing from that.

Whether it was the result of his coding or something else, his worry made her feel better. Amanda takes a breath and nods, blinking back the urge to cry. She wasn't a fan of bawling her eyes out -- especially in front of her roommate. "I'm alright, I just fell out of bed."

The panic gripping her chest is still there, a thrumming adrenaline that makes her breath tight. Amanda tucks her shaking hands underneath her thighs and shakes her head. "I whacked my shoulder, but other than that, I'm fine."

The oil-black shadow of the alien is still painted over her thoughts. For a creature she only saw up-close a handful of times, her dreams were disturbingly detailed.

Shooing away the leftover memories, Ripley shifts to get up. If she sat here any longer, she'd just dissolve into a puddle of tears. "I'm sorry for making so much racket," she says as she draws her knees up. Her shoulder protests at the idea of moving, but she pushes past the pain. "It was just a dream."

A hand comes into her field of vision, and she looks up at him.

Oh, Samuels. Always agreeable, and always looking to help. There's no doubt he'd noticed her trembling, but he doesn't mention it. She's grown to appreciate that kind of ignorance; it was easier to show vulnerability when she wasn't being questioned at every turn.

After a split-second of consideration, she accepts his help. Her free hand slips up his forearm as he effortlessly helps her up, and Ripley feels oddly comforted. All of that inhuman strength, and he was using it for such compassion.

"I can go start the kettle, if you'd like." He turns his head as he speaks, directing his attention towards the kitchen, and Ripley barely hears what he's saying. A warm drink sounds nice, really nice, but she's a bit distracted.

She'd been described as 'touch starved' by a therapist once. At the time, Amanda scoffed at such a label, and once she'd cleared her psych-eval for Weyland-Yutani, she never went back to the office. Talking about herself just made her uncomfortable. Now, she's beginning to reconsider the diagnosis.

She stumbles over her racing thoughts for a moment before looking up. They're standing closer than usual -- not overly so, but close enough that she could step forward and press her forehead to his collar. He hasn't pulled away. He probably thinks she's unsteady and needs the support.

"Christopher," she says. Despite their time together, his first name still feels special, like a secret only she's privy to. "Thanks, for everything."

He glances back down at her. "It is the least I can do."

He sounds surprised by her appreciation, but she finds herself stuck on his reply.

It was the least he could do. As if he owed her somehow, and not the other way around. He'd already given his life for her once; she didn't want him feeling obligated to give her more. Amanda hesitates before pulling her hands away.

She knows she should take a step back, accept his offer for tea and let this encounter play out like the others. They had a routine for nights like this: she'd wake up terrified, and they'd make comforting small-talk until she was ready to fall asleep again. This was breaking that routine, and yet she's still tempted to toe the line further.

Ripley scolds herself for being selfish, but that doesn't stop her from leaning up to wrap her arms around him. He's too tall for her to comfortably set her chin on his shoulder, so she rests her cheek against his chest. He's warmer there, and she can feel the electric thrum of his heartbeat through his shirt.

"I don't want you to owe me, Samuels." Amanda knows she's taking advantage of him, initiating such close contact when he couldn't turn her down. Whatever his actual feelings towards her, he still had programming that made him susceptible to the wishes of others.

She should save him the discomfort of close contact and pull away, but she feels her eyes flood with tears again. Ripley turns her head so her forehead is against his chest. "I'm really sorry," she says, tone undeniably watery. Sorry for leaving him on Sevastapol, sorry that he feels indebted to her, sorry for selfishly using him for comfort.

Sorry for a lot of things.

There's a moment of hesitation, and she's about to pull away and apologize when his arms come up around her.

After her rescue from Sevastopol, she'd awoken to someone touching her. It was just a scavenger trying to drag her out of the EVA suit, but she'd almost broken his nose trying to get away. After everything, getting caught in someone's grip had become a deep-seated fear.

But panic is the last thing she feels when Samuels' arms circle her shoulders. "You have nothing to apologize for," he says, and she can feel the reverb of his vocalizer deep in his chest, deep and warm.

Amanda shuts her eyes tighter, sending tears down her cheeks, and a breath shudders in her throat.

She knows for a fact that his words of comfort aren't something generated by code and guided by pre-set parameters. Few humans could manage such empathy, and she knows Weyland-Yutani didn't plan for this.

That only left the possibility that he was speaking honestly, and the idea makes Amanda's chest hurt. She was no good at doling out kindnesses and soft words, but he managed it so effortlessly. Her fingers curl in the fabric of his shirt, and she presses herself closer.

Samuels' hand comes up to hold the back of her head, fingers tangling in her loose hair. The soft gesture brings another wave of tears. "I could never blame you, Amanda."

His reassurances only make her cry harder, but the pain is different. Productive, maybe. Some part of her compares it to stitches; she could allow herself to hurt, because he was there to hold her together.

She cries until her throat hurts, and by the time her sobs subside, his shirt is wet under her cheek. Ripley rests there for a moment, smoothing her breathing into something calm and collected. It was okay. She just spent five minutes sobbing onto her closest friend, but it was okay.

Pulling away, Amanda takes a breath. "I haven't cried like that in forever." She tries to dry her face with the back of her hand, but just ends up wiping the tears over her cheek.

Giving up, she looks up at him instead. "Thank you, again." Ripley gives him a smile before he can respond, patting his chest. "And don't say it's the least you can do. You've done a lot already."

"Perhaps, but I do wish I could do more." She's about to interrupt and scold him, but he reaches up, hand faltering near her face. His eyes come up to meet hers. "May I?"

Knowing he needs approval before he touches her, Ripley nods. Samuels takes a small step forward, his hands coming up to cradle her jaw. He swipes away the tears there, thumb running across her cheekbone, and the touch is tender. Her eyes flutter shut, and she has the fleeting daydream of him leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead.

She's tempted to lean into his warm palm, but he pulls away politely and she quickly recovers her mental footing. Just a helpful gesture, she reminds herself. Nothing to get worked up over.

"Would you like tea?" he asks, and Ripley nods vigorously. Tea. Yeah. That sounded really nice, especially right now.

The apartment was warm -- Samuels was dedicated to keeping the thermostat balanced in the winter months -- but Ripley still felt cold. Her leftover trembling would pass, she reminds herself, she just had to wait. She follows him to the kitchen, putting her hair up with the band around her wrist.

Samuels had a careful, methodical way of doing things, and she watches him work from her place at the bar. It's comforting, to watch him wander around her kitchen so familiarly.

He hands her a mug (he chose lavender, she notices), and Ripley thanks him as she takes it with both hands. Back to routine, though she's not sure if she's relieved or disappointed.

Just tired, she decides. Really tired, and a little too emotionally drained to sort through her feelings.

She sips at her drink as he puts away the teabox and honey. Usually, he had more to say after her nightmares, even if it was just a synopsis of the book he was reading. She liked listening to him re-tell stories in a way that made sense to him. Amanda's storytelling was usually fragmented and hard to follow, but Samuels had a way of saying things.

She's not disappointed by his silence, but she does notice it. He seems lost in thought, and she ducks her head to focus on her tea. He never pressed her for conversation, and she had no plans to do so either.

Perhaps he was just as tired as she was.

He didn't need sleep often, but that didn't mean he didn't occasionally need to run repairs. His rest cycles looked exactly like sleep, complete with the measured rise and fall of his breathing. Probably a feature to help him blend in with human crews, but she considered it more of a human trait than a mimicry.

"Would you mind if I took a look at your shoulder?" His voice makes her look up, pulling her out of her thoughts. Samuels seems to pause for a moment. "More to ease my own mind than yours, I will admit."

"Oh," she says, reaching up to touch her sore shoulder. Ripley hesitates, but nods and sets down her half-empty cup. "Yeah, um. Here."

Her hands go to the bottom of her sweater, pulling it over her head. Her hasty bun comes half un-done to tickle her neck, and Ripley pushes the sleeve of her tank-top down over her shoulder. "I'm sure it's fine. I'll just have to avoid sleeping on that side for a while."

Ripley had dislocated her shoulder once before. She'd been 22 and fresh out of WeYu's engineering program, and a rough drop in an airlock had knocked something out of place. She'd gotten someone to pop it back into the socket, and bribed them into keeping a secret. Injuries that early in her contract could have gotten her flagged for irresponsibility, and she couldn't afford that.

Then, she'd dealt with it by herself, stiffly doing her work until the injury healed. Now, she feels strangely doted upon. It was just a minor injury, but he seemed adamant on making sure she was alright.

She knows she shouldn't be surprised. He was assigned to the Torrens as an aide for the crew; this was second nature to him.

Still, his touch is unnecessarily ginger as he checks her over. The nightstand only bruised her shoulderblade, the angle awkward from her fall. He checks the area before lifting her arm, grip gentle on her wrist. She winces at the twist, and he seems to notice.

"Is there too much pain, or do you have full range of motion?" Amanda stifles a shiver as his warm hand comes to rest against her shoulder, and his words seem to brush over the bare skin of her shoulder.

"Y-yeah," she says, voice faltering on the word. She lifts her arm to reassure him, rolling her shoulder for good measure. "It doesn't feel that bad -- I've definitely had worse."

A day or two of pain was child's play after Sevastapol. She'd sustained two broken ribs, several broken digits and a concussion, not including countless flesh wounds.

Between getting dragged through vent shafts, the constant explosions and fire, and fighting for her life, it was hard to avoid getting injured. A bruised shoulder would heal much faster.

Tugging the strap of her tank top back over her shoulder, he pulls away. "I can only imagine." His tone hints at something deeper, and Amanda almost opens her mouth to say something. Samuels interrupts her before she can start. "Would you like me to move your blankets to another room?"

Ah, well, there was no way she was going to fall back asleep in her own bedroom, but the guest room doesn't sound much better.

Ripley pulls her sweater over her head before glancing at the kitchen's wall-clock. Nearly four in the morning -- another four hours until she had to leave for work. She shakes her head. "I think I'll just move to the couch. Falling asleep in front of the television sounds better than laying in bed."

Spending time alone wasn't her favorite thing in the world, especially in times like this. The months after her rescue were a lonely blur, her most poignant memories being the times when she woke up screaming and sick. She was past that, thankfully. The raw terror she felt in the immediate aftermath had faded somewhat, leaving her almost... collected.

Amanda shifts her gaze along the counter before finishing her tea. Breaking down in front of Samuels wasn't the definition of collected, but she was coping. Even embarrassing herself in front of him was better than being by herself. Ripley drums her nails against her teacup. "I can't guarantee I'll stay awake for long, but you're welcome to join me."

Samuels tips his head towards her in a low nod, and she catches the glimpse of a smile before he turns away. "Of course."

She hops off her chair to rinse out her mug, and sets it in the drainboard before making her way over to the couch. The television flips on with a low hum, the screen lighting up into a black-and-white movie.

 _Arsenic and Old Lace,_ judging by the first actor she sees. No surprise, she's sure she could be eighty and late night television would still be wrought with overly-vintage classics. Amanda gives it a moment of thought before stepping forward to take the remote and join him on the couch.

Usually, she'd take the spot closest to the wall: the only place in the apartment that she could see all the doors. Samuels would politely sit himself on the other side of the three-person couch, leaving the comfortable buffer between them. Close enough to be companionable, but far enough away that Ripley would contemplate filling the space.

If she was feeling particularly at ease, she'd sit sideways and rest her legs on the seat between them. Close enough for him to reach out and touch, not that he ever did. Inhibitors made Christopher careful about initiating contact, only touching her when his coding deemed it consensual or necessary.

This time, Amanda settles herself on the middle seat, drawing up her knees as she takes a place next to him. Their routine was already broken in several places, surely it could take another fracture.

When it becomes obvious that Samuels doesn't mind the closeness, Amanda relaxes, slumping into the cushions. Crying always left her drained, and the tea had managed to calm her nerves enough for her to feel tired. She focuses on the television, trying to piece together what she'd missed. Her mother had liked old movies, but Amanda had always been too easily distracted to sit through full-length films.

After her mother's disappearance, the younger Ripley had adopted her mother's interest. Not sincerely, but as a way to feel closer to her. Amanda had long moved past that stage in her life -- she wasn't 14 and lonely anymore -- but she still knows enough to recognize the movie.

"Quite a morbid film," Samuels comments lightly, voice low, "at least, for a comedy."

Amanda stifles a laugh. "Yeah, a bit. Forties filmmakers were fond of gallows humor." Getting Christopher to speak his mind about things had taken a bit of time. Despite being fully capable of holding opinions and interests, much of the crew had treated him coldly when he tried to share his thoughts.

She sympathized with that. She was just an engineer, and her ventures up onto the ship's main decks were usually met with terse conversation.

During one of those times, she'd heard him get rebuffed rather cruelly. "If we wanted a synthetic opinion, we'd ask," or something equally closeminded.

Later, she'd tracked him down and asked about the film he mentioned, and it had been the first time they'd really spoken.

Ripley shuts her eyes. That was before the Torrens, and long before Sevastapol. She'd only known Samuels for a few months before they were reassigned together, but it felt like a lifetime in retrospect. She gets a little carried away in the memories, her thoughts drifting away. Amanda feels herself slip to one side, but she's met with warm resistance.

Just Chris, she thinks, and lets herself settle against his side. She'd apologize for the unnecessary contact when she woke up.

**Author's Note:**

> Chances are, I'm probably going to add to this. I've found a nice spot to sit in this tag, and I plan on planting my ass here for a while.


End file.
